EFFIGIES and MARKERS

Monday, September 9, 2013

How do you stop a very old rumor, especially if it's hit the
internet? I'm going to try, by telling you, repeating it, and saying it
again. I will be overly redundant on the matter. Why do I try? Because
this blog has received hundreds of search inquiries on this very
subject.

Many genealogy pages (and Ruth
Plimpton's book) say Mary Dyer's ancestry was royal by virtue of being the secret child of Lady Arabella
Stuart and Sir William Seymour. If you've copied that
to your records, it's time to erase the false legend now.
No researcher has
found proof of Mary's parents or her birth or christening record. They
have, however, found proof that Mary Barrett had a brother named William
Barrett who in the custom of the times was probably named after their
father. Please read researcher Johan Winsser's articles at this link.

The pure fiction
that Mary was the daughter of nobility and potentially an heir to the
throne of Great Britain, was created by a Dyer descendant, Frederick
Nathaniel Dyer, in the 1800s, the romantic Victorian era. It resembles
many other
attempts by conspiracy theorists to create some sort of connection to
European
royalty, perhaps to explain why a girl with no known background (as yet
discovered) had an above-average education and stood out among other
women of
her time. The romantic notion was that a commoner from Westminster could
never have risen socially without a
royal background.

The false story is that Mary was the child of Lady
Arabella Stuart (3x great-granddaughter of Henry VII), aged 35, and
William Seymour
(4x great-grandson of Henry VII), aged 22 at time of their secret and
illegal marriage. King James forbade their marriage, but they married in
secret in early July 1610. The secret was revealed, and by 9 July 1610,
Arabella and William were arrested and imprisoned. Separate quarters, as you must imagine! William was in the Tower of London; Arabella was at Lambeth Palace under house arrest. History records that
there was no issue from this marriage. That means there was no secret
child who would be raised as Mary Barrett.

Lady Arabella Stuart, probably about the timeof her illegal and short-lived marriage to William Seymour.

Age 35 was very old for first-time pregnancy in those
days. It's called "elderly prima gravida" even today. If Arabella had become pregnant during her one week of married bliss and borne a baby while in custody and under a doctor's care for several maladies, it would have been
noticed by servants, royal household personnel, Anglican clergy, or any
of the hundreds of Tower of London employees like, oh, say, prison guards--it was impossible to hide
something like that, especially since Arabella was a prisoner under a
royal-watcher microscope! What about the laboring mother's screams or groans? What about a newborn baby's cry?

But according to FN Dyer's legend, the newborn Seymour child was
spirited out of the Tower of London (a prison, remember, with security) and named after and raised by her nurse,
the original Mary Barrett or Mary Dyer, and hidden from King James I while he searched for the child who had a better
claim to the throne. What a
crock of snooty bias! Another point against FN Dyer is that Arabella was not even in the Tower at this time--she was across the river under house arrest.

In early June the next year, the young William Seymour escaped the Tower and fled to France, having missed his connection with Arabella, who also escaped from her journey north to captivity in Durham. She traveled in men's clothes,
but was delayed by weather, captured, and returned to prison. If Arabella and William had a child born in March 1611, would they not have taken that child with them to their exile in France? After all, the child was supposed to have had a better heritage for the throne than King James. But King James, a middle-aged man, had been on the throne for years, and had heirs by now, so there was no need, no chance for a Seymour baby to knock him out. That's just not logical.

I've read a
false rumor that Arabella Stuart Seymour
was killed by King James in 1615 in the Tower of London. No, Arabella
actually died--childless--from a self-imposed hunger strike in 1615. You can read their story in detail, which cites letters of all the players involved, here: http://archive.org/stream/arbellastuartbio00harduoft/arbellastuartbio00harduoft_djvu.txt

After Arabella died, there was no reason to keep Seymour in prison, so
(no doubt after a large fine paid by his family) he went back to
England, and married Lady Frances Devereux
in March 1617. They had seven children. Seymour took up a political
career, and was a royalist supporter of his much-removed cousins, King
Charles I and II. Again, if he had a baby by Arabella, wouldn't he have taken over the upbringing?

Let me be clear: it's impossible for Mary Dyer to have been a Stuart-Seymour daughter.

Really, isn't it MORE remarkable that Mary Dyer was brilliant and
accomplished on her own, without a privileged background? Now, please go
to your ancestry or genealogy files and DELETE the Stuarts and Seymours
from your records. Arabella Stuart Seymour had no issue. No Mary.

Celebrate that you are descended from a brilliant and beautiful woman
who became great not because of whose child she was, but because of her
conscious choice to lay down her life for her friends.

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About Me

Christy is an author and editor whose biographical novels and nonfiction book on William and Mary Dyer were published in 2013 and 2014. Her hardcover book "We Shall Be Changed" (2010 Review & Herald) is also available. In September 2015 she published "Effigy Hunter," a nonfiction history and travel guide, and will follow that with a nonfiction book on Anne Hutchinson, then a historical novel set in England in the 1640s-1660s.